William Gunn, 31, Police Officer Shot in 1989 Hunt for a Gunman

By LEE A. DANIELS

Published: November 28, 1992

William T. Gunn, a New York City police officer who had been in a coma since he was shot pursuing a murder suspect almost four years ago, died yesterday at the Skilled Nursing Facility of Franklin Hospital Medical Center in Valley Stream, L.I. He was 31 years old.

Officer Gunn, who had joined the Police Department in 1982, was shot on Jan. 20, 1989, as he and two other plainclothes officers tried to capture a suspect wanted for questioning in two homicides.

The three officers, all assigned to the 67th Precinct in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, had gone to a Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment building looking for the suspect. As one of Officer Gunn's partners moved up the building's stairway, a man burst through an apartment door firing, and wounded the officer in the shoulder. When Officer Gunn rushed to his fallen partner's aid, he was shot in the head.

His partner, Detective Louis R. Rango, subsequently recovered.

The suspect, Ralph Richardson, 20, escaped an intensive police manhunt that day, in part by hiding in a nearby apartment and killing its occupant, a 67-year-old woman. But a week later, after committing several robberies and being wounded in the thigh by an off-duty police officer while robbing a video store, Richardson shot himself to death in a stolen car on a desolate, dead-end street in Brooklyn.

Officer Gunn, who had suffered severe brain damage, underwent a series of operations during his long hospitalization, but he never regained consciousness, according to Bruce Beaver, a hospital spokesman.

Last April, a park at Public School 18 in Bellerose, Queens, was dedicated in his honor.

He is survived by his wife, Lori; a daughter, Jennifer; his parents, and two brothers.